Archive for the 'Adobe' Category

Yesterday, Adobe started rolling out their updated version of Creative Cloud, Adobe CC 2015. This update brings with it many enhancements for the core Adobe applications. If you’re already using Creative Cloud, simply launch the Creative Cloud application (from the system tray on Windows or the notifications area on Mac) and you should be able to update any or all of the applications.

Some of my favorite updates include:

Artboards in Photoshop

Auto-save in Illustrator

Bootstrap and Emmet integration in Dreamweaver

Faster zooming and scrolling in InDesign

You can read more about the update by visiting the following resources on Adobe’s website:

Over the next several months, IT Training staff will be busy updating our in person and online workshop materials to teach the Adobe CC 2015 applications. Check back in the fall semester to sign up for our course offerings!

Is there a special shape, symbol, or logo that you are always stamping on your graphics? Do you have a watermark that you want to add to all of your pictures before you post them to the web? One of the best and fastest ways to do this is by creating a custom brush in Photoshop! It only takes a few minutes to create and will be there for you whenever you need it.

One of the awesome things Illustrator can do is let us turn our art into a repeating pattern that we can use for the fill or stroke of our art objects (and even text)! Figuring out how to do it, though, can be a little tricky. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the process of creating a pattern. Read the rest of “Creating a Pattern Fill in Illustrator” »

This is part of a series of articles that will appear over the next few months as part of the Go Paperless initiative at Indiana University.

Adobe Acrobat permits you to treat a PDF document as you normally would a paper document, even using the actions of active reading strategies (such as SQ3R): highlighting, underlining, and taking notes or leaving comments. These annotations you create are then embedded in the document, so you may easily share them with others, or review them yourself later.

While there are some differences between the last few versions of Acrobat in performing these tasks, the methods remain pretty similar across all of them. This post has information for those using Acrobat X, XI, DC, and the last three versions of Apple’s Preview application.

This is part of a series of articles that will appear over the next few months as part of the Go Paperless initiative at Indiana University.

Reducing paper consumption

Everyone at IU needs to know about how to reduce paper consumption.Paperless systems take up minimal space, they save energy and landfill space. Using digital documents allows easy collaboration with others and on-the-go access wherever you have Internet. In comparison to file cabinet systems, good paperless document organization can help you find the information you need at lighting speed. And there’s no need to worry about fires or floods; using digital documents, it is very easy to create back-ups of all your important data. Moreover, with the security available in backup and storage programs, your digitally stored information has stronger protection from theft. Finally, no need to shred when you are done; virtual documents can be easily purged.

In keeping with that spirit, IT Training has developed a series of articles under the heading, “Go Paperless.” Read on for the many reasons to leap into the modern method of document storage. Here are the articles in our “Go Paperless” Series:

This is part of a series of articles that will appear over the next few months as part of the Go Paperless initiative at Indiana University.

Two Box apps that can make your life easier

Using Box at IU along with two Box add-ins, you and your project group can work on a single file — without having to keep a local copy on your device and then sending your document around via hard copy or email.

In his article about Box, Tom Mason has extolled the merits of using Box Edit. Let’s talk about this Box App a little more. With Box Edit, you can simply open a file directly from the preview page on Box, make edits instantly, and save the new version back to Box automatically. Then, when you share your document with others, your collaborators can use Box Edit to work on the same document in the same way—without ever having to download and re-upload it! As long as you have the application on your computer, you don’t have to worry about the file type. PSD files, presentations, images, CAD drawings, Illustrator files – any file you can edit on your computer’s desktop you can now edit without leaving Box. Install Box Edit once and it will work on all your browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer (Windows) and Safari (Mac).

Another app, Box for Office, allows you to start up an Office Document such as Word, PowerPoint, or Excel on your own computer–and when you choose Save As, you can save directly to your Box account without having to upload it. Once there, share it with others and they can use Box Edit to edit it.

I need to assemble a research poster – how do I get started, and what programs can I use to make a poster? And how do I make graphs to display my data?

With programs like InDesign, Illustrator, and Microsoft Publisher, with a little help from Microsoft Excel, you can create an eye-catching poster to showcase your research project. Illustrator and Excel can be used to create attractive graphs to display any data you wish to share, and you can pull everything together in InDesign or Publisher and lay out the contents of your poster. Before you start building your poster, there are a few steps you can take to help get things rolling.

Having a general idea of how your poster will look will help you get started – think about how things will be laid out on the page, what colors you’ll be using, and what fonts you’ll be using for your poster. A rough sketch of what you want your poster to look like when it’s finished may be helpful, and you can use that as a road map of where things should end up on your poster. Make notes about the colors you might want to use, and fonts you might want to use for headings and body text – when you start building your poster, you’ll have everything you need planned out already and can focus on laying things out. You’ll also want to make sure to collect any images you want to include, the data you want to present, and the text of your poster in one location before you start working. Once you have those items together, the following learning paths will help you create your poster.

If you’re new to the Adobe Creative Suite, trying to figure out what the different parts of the programs do can be a daunting task. This video helps take some of the mystery out of Adobe CS6, however, and introduces you to the interfaces for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Dreamweaver.

Please note: For the best viewing experience, please use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

This is part of a series of articles that will appear over the next few months as part of the Go Paperless initiative at Indiana University.

Does your department make use of forms that people need to fill out and return to you? If so, one way to reduce the amount of paper used by printing out all those forms is to create a PDF form in Adobe Acrobat. Not only does it help reduce the amount of paper your office uses, but there are also other benefits to making use of PDF Forms. In this article, I’ll show you how to create a simple PDF form using Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat XI.

Creating websites can be a daunting task – especially if you don’t have much experience with HTML code. If you’re more of a graphic designer than a web designer, and want to create attractive websites without needing to learn how to code, Adobe Muse can help! Muse is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of software, and IT Training’s recent webinar, Muse: Creating a Website without Coding, gives a quick overview of the program.

If you’ve worked with Adobe’s design programs, like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, Muse provides familiar tools and a similar interface to Adobe’s design programs, and graphic designers will feel right at home designing websites in Muse. We couldn’t cover everything that Muse has to offer in our webinar – is there anything you’re interested in learning how to do in Muse? Drop us a line in the comments!